Archive for August, 2008

I sometimes like to rail against news outlets and journalists for their shoddy reporting. It’s not that I think that all journalists have an agenda. What drives me nuts is what I generally perceive to be a lack of conscientious effort, combined with a misguided effort to be “fair” and “cover all sides” that allows misconceptions and lack of truthfulness and accuracy to pervade news coverage.

Time for a gaming model! This one comes from Ninjatoes’ Papercraft Webpage and is from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Excellent looking model that is nicely detailed. If you want to add Link, the model of Link technically from The Four Swords but it scales nicely with the model. You can get the whole ship here, and Link here and here.

Oops! Once again, a news organization has let slip an obituary for someone who isn’t dead. This time, Bloomberg killed Apple’s Steve Jobs! (How’s that for a defamatory yellow journalism-type headline?!) While questions have been swirling around for the last few months about Steve’s health, declaring him dead is taking it a little too far, don’t you think?

Apparently, it’s common practice for news organizations to pre-write canned obits for famous people, so they already have something to release when the person actually dies. And this isn’t the first time that an obituary has been released prematurely. Remember in 2003 when CNN suddenly declared Fidel Castro, Dick Cheney, Nelson Mandela, Bob Hope, Gerald Ford, Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan dead?

Steve had pancreatic cancer a few years back, and some thought he looked thin and/or ill this past June at the Worldwide Developer’s Conference, leading to rampant speculation. I’m sure this just adds fuel to the fire. Here’s to hoping Steve has a few more Apple innovations left in him!

If you are not familiar with adventure games, well, shame on you! You’ve missed out on so much in life. Adventure games are games based on puzzle-solving, exploration, and character interaction. Twitch-reflex action not allowed! Games like these got me through college, and the Sierra On-Line games like Hero’s Quest/Quest for Glory, King’s Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, et al. were high on my list of favorites.

AGD Interactive is a non-profit established by Britney K. Brimhall and Christopher T. Warren to remake older AGI or SCI parser-based Sierra games. Under the studio name of Tierra, they did the excellent remakes of King’s Quest 1 and King’s Quest 2+ which are both highly regarded by Sierra fans. They also founded Himalaya Studios, dedicated to new, original, point-and-click adventure games with high-resolution graphics. They released a commercial game in 2006 called Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman’s Mine, which I think I might order.